Welcome to issue #165 of Nightmare Magazine!
The Xenomorph is my absolute favorite horror monster. It’s stylish, menacing, and quite often slimy. With a multiplicity of scary forms, from insectile face-hugger to tadpole-ish chest-burster to scuttling warrior, its physiognomy is remarkable. It has acid for blood. It’s athletic, capable of leaping many times its own length in almost any life-stage, and incredibly tough: It can survive short stints in the vacuum of space. All incredible attributes.
But do you know what my favorite thing is about the Xenomorph? It’s the mouth.
Remember the first time you ever saw the Xenomorph’s mouth? Those silver, almost human-shaped teeth? The pooling saliva as the maw slowly opened, revealing not a tongue, but a projectile mouth-within-a-mouth? What kind of monster is so hungry it needs a mouth inside its mouth?
Which is the reason the Xenomorph is the most horror-y horror monster.
I say this because I think well over three-quarters of horror’s work is centered around the mouth (that number gets larger if you dig into metaphorical mouths and metaphorical eating). More mouths equals more horror.
By this logic, this issue might be our most horror-packed issue yet, because every work is centered around the mouth. We have original short fiction about teeth from both Aishatu Ado (“What Grows Back”) and Izzy Wasserstein (“Patterns of Dentition in Transgender Adults”). Our Horror Lab originals include a mouth-centered flash piece (“NoMouth”) from Marianne Kirby and a mouth-and-fang flavored poem (“Good Morning, Wolf—”) from Stephanie M. Wytovich.
Our nonfiction includes author spotlights with our authors and a media review from Adam-Troy Castro. Author Chris Panatier joins us with an upbeat installment of our “The H Word” column that will make you either want to write a horror novel or go to a metal show, or maybe both.
It’s another terrific issue. We hope you have fun devouring every last word.
